By Ryan Morrissey and Ouriel Lancry Everyone thinks about Netflix as a digital native. The company delivers content via any device, produces TV shows and films using reams of customer data, and is even headquartered in Silicon Valley. In reality, Netflix used to be the media industry equivalent of Sears―shipping DVDs by mail from large warehouses located across the country. Netflix’s business today is just the latest chapter in the short history of a company that has reinvented itself at least three times in 20 years. From its humble origins shipping DVDs by mail, it became the dominant platform for streaming movies, only to evolve further to challenge the most successful studios in the entertainment business with its original content. While each chapter seems to [...]

Time is running out on personalized marketing as a means of continually raising the return on investment of campaigns. For the past few years, many marketers have used advanced data analytics to identify the right customers and increase their ROI, but now these practices, while still valuable, are reaching a plateau. The rise of so many digital channels and options for customers heightens the importance of another, underappreciated variable: message timing, as detailed in new research by Bain & Company in partnership with Google. To strengthen customer relationships, marketers need to know not only which current or prospective customers to reach, but also in which moments. By communicating at the most opportune times based on people’s behavior and signals, companies can generate more business with [...]

Failing to zero-base opportunities account by account can leave sales executives flying blind with their market approach. Kate Woolley, a partner with Bain's Customer Strategy & Marketing practice, shares how leading companies use a rigorous zero-based approach at the account level to get a clear view of revenue potential in the market. Related: Stop Flying Blind in Sales

Bain research has identified the most important things that businesses value when consuming business services and products and have codified those in the Elements of Value. Lori Sherer, a partner with Bain’s Advanced Analytics practice, discusses how two companies used data and analytics to enhance the value of their services. Read more in the Harvard Business Review: The B2B Elements of Value

By Daniel Hong and Gregory Callahan In the quest for profitability, many business-to-business companies overlook one critical factor: the cost of customer support. Consider the media sales firm in the accompanying chart that linked its sales and postsales databases, allowing it to view accounts by price achieved and intensity of support required. It discovered that its two largest customers by revenue were unprofitable, while customers 10 through 20 were among the most profitable. The company responded by raising prices for low-price/low-support accounts and negotiated to make high-price/high-support relationships more efficient. It also gave its best existing accounts preferential treatment and cut loose many small, unprofitable accounts. As a result, the company expanded overall profits by 10%. Daniel Hong is a partner and Gregory Callahan is [...]

A lean, cost-effective and fast delivery engine is the key to prioritizing the customer experience. Jens Engelhardt, a partner with Bain's Customer Strategy & Marketing practice, outlines the five rules companies should follow when they develop a simple and digital approach to reduce complexity and transform their core business. Read the Bain Brief: Running the Business through Your Customer's Eyes

Imagine you work for a company that provides technology to businesses and has the following go-to-market approach. You crunch external financial, demographic and technology data to determine the probability of any company fitting in the segments most likely to buy more of your solutions. You use external intent indicators, such as search terms and job postings, to understand whether these businesses have appetite to buy a solution right now. Without making a phone call, you have filtered every potential customer to identify those in your sweet spot looking to buy, by city. You then deliver digital advertising to the individuals who made those searches, tailoring the content to their segment. Your inside sales team calls them to offer the latest white paper on the topic [...]

By Jonathan Hanson, Jonny Holliday and Jeff Taylor Many business-to-business companies spread sales targets like jam evenly across accounts, with few taking the trouble to zero-base their opportunities, account by account. Doing a thorough opportunity analysis proved to be a revelation for one IT services provider. It surveyed decision makers about their priorities and spending in the various service categories, as well as resellers. It combined the survey results with third-party data on spending, the location of customers' operations, the size and composition of their IT staff, patent filings, and the technology environment in each customer—all of which informed a segmentation of 160,000 companies. Then the company used predictive analytics software to define the revenue opportunity for each account and prospect, as shown in the chart. For example, [...]

By Jonathan Frick and Mark Kovac When deciding where to allocate their salesforce capacity, many business-to-business companies base their choices on current and historical spending by customer. Accounts spending more with the company usually get more sales resources. But to attain stronger sales growth, it’s critical to understand each customer’s total potential spending by the relevant product category. Estimates of a customer’s wallet size can be built through heuristic models based on public and internal data that predicts or is a proxy for spending levels. Such data includes the customer’s Standard Industrial Classification code and revenues, number of workers, or number of locations. One enterprise software company estimated the total potential spending of its accounts for each category of information technology it sold. The chart [...]